Ages back (ok a couple of weeks ago in real time, long in game time) I took on a mission to destroy a Plunderer Phoenix Vanguard. The money was good. I had a Cerberus. My Cerberus was big. No problem. Of course I had not paid any real attention on ship types...
Found the Plunderer Phoenix Vanguard, or rather it found me as I approached, "Give us your stuff!" the pilot said.
Pfeh! Me have big ship with big guns. I closed in as it turned towards me.
Then I saw it... Ah... It's one of those gigantic mushroom looking ships I've seen around sometimes. It dwarfed my 'big' ship.
It's slow, I'm faster, how bad can it be?
It blew me away. I guess that's my Iron-man game blown.
Reloaded. Blown away again. Reload, no way can I take that behemoth, no wonder the money was good. Left and did other missions for ages. Got a couple more Freighters to garner more cash.But I hadn't forgotten about that ship...
I came across it a couple of times causing problems and sometimes shooting others. It had a very sneaky tactic of looking like a normal innocent ship in blue when near Stations and other powerful ships, but when further out, it would turn red and attack you. The odd times I bumped into it it kept doing that. Clever.
Finally, after ages, I had a Cerberus with medium loadout and a backup Minotaur. I felt that I needed some marines since I was considering boarding and catching it if possible which would be the best revenge. However, I was kinda unkind to my Marines, as I really expected them to be cannon fodder. Got as many as I could of low skill. There are lots just hanging around stations uselessly.
Found the Phoenix next to a station in 'innocent' blue. It was randomly shooting some civilian ships and Freighters that came close, but not attacking the Station. It did not react to me.
I knew it was still too powerful for me to just take on so devised a plan to get in right inbetween its struts behind it so as few of its guns could get a shot at me as possible...
Then It suddenly moved off and out towards deeper space. Good.
I caught it up, it still didn't react to me. I had a feeling that any moment now it would turn pirate and attack. I got in real close in its wake and among its struts in its rear. I prepared my ragtag noob Marines, "This will be a glorious battle, blah, blah!" as they stared at me dully. Set my ships guns to batter the Phoenix's defenses to nothing and weaken it as much as possible. Sent in the ragtag Marines. Off they went as my guns opened fire.
The noise clouded much of what the Marines said in their update sitrep, but it sounded like they weren't doing too well. That's fine, cos they were really a diversion.
We battered the engines to off, silenced most his guns except his forward ones. He couldn't touch my ship. It was like trying to scratch his back to get a flea! lol!
However, his shields kept coming back up and his engine kept fixing itself and I realised he had some kind of drones repairing his ship. I sent in my Minotaur backup to attack. It battered the Minotaur as it didn't stay in the rear and I had to order it to retreat fast- It only just got out of there. I concentrated my main guns on weakening the shields while working around the rear of the ship with my other guns taking out anything else, over and over, cos it kept repairing bits. It takes a LOOOONG while to do and great patience, my drone ships had been blown away by now -
Then suddenly all the guns stopped firing and the Phoenix was silent and still in space.
Looked like it had surrendered and I saw some escape pods floating about which I could not pick up. Why? They're my prisoners now.
The Phoenix had been battered to about 25% it's hull and it wouldn't even move cos it had no engines... But it was mine.
Only problem is my mission was to destroy it, but I want to keep it, so I guess I won't get the money.
It was pretty epic. I knew I was likely doing things the very hard way, especially using weaker ships.
Sorry this was so long.
p.s Game was modded with an extra missions mod, not sure if that has any relevance.
